X: Rebirth

X4: Foundations, the latest in Egosoft's long-running series of enormous sandbox space sims, is out now. Claiming to be a return to form after the notoriously wonky and limiting X: Rebirth, X4 aims to be more of a systems-driven sandbox, rather than a story-driven space adventure. Players can walk around inside vessels and seamlessly onto stations, pilot almost any ship type, build up fleets and…

Spaceship explore-o-trade-a-shoot-y-sandbox series X will return revamped and expanded with X4: Foundations [official site], developers Egosoft announced over the weekend. They've muttered for years about what they'd fix and changed after 2013's disappointing X: Rebirth and lawks, it looks like they've learned a lot. Spacemen will once again be able to fly every ship in the game rather than being locked to one, for starters.…

Since it's rather catastrophic launch back in 2013, Egosoft have been steadily steadying the X Rebirth [official site] ship with a host of free updates and expansions. The latest drive to get the space trading-a-thon back on course sees the release of the game's Home of Light DLC, its major update 4.0, and discounts across the board to both the base game and its add-ons.

X Rebirth [official site] is not what we wanted next from the space trade-o-explore-a-zapzap sim series, and not really what developers Egosoft wanted either. They've improved it with patches, but alongside the launch of a new patch they've said some things can't be changed - and will be tackled in a not-quite-announced future X game. They don't have too much to say about this semi-hypothetical…

Smugglers and pirates are among the space-things coming to X Rebirth in its first expansion, The Teladi Outpost, developers Egosoft have announced. Almost a year after the space sim's awful launch, they feel enough fires are out that they can start making new things. Egosoft still spraying foam and sealing off bulkheads, mind, as they plan to release another two big patches by the time…

Once upon a time, the Internet's most powerful Craig, Craig "Craig" Craig (Pearson) proclaimed X Rebirth "an appalling, broken mess, and I’m not going back." Are you sure, though, Craig? Are you absolutely sure? What if... what if it stopped being entirely terrible? What if version 2.0's changes were so extensive that they got their own PDF with a table of contents? Would that be…

Poor old Craigypops. He was so looking forward to X: Rebirth. But wot he got was a buggy mess of a poorly conceived game, and one in such a state he couldn't see a way out for the project. Developers Egosoft are hoping otherwise, and have released a trailer explaining the fixes and changes that are new in the next patch.

X: Rebirth made Craig sad. Given that all we at RPS want to do is defend Craig and keep him safe from the harsh realities of this slowly rotting world, we were fully prepared to launch a volley of our most devastating starfighters at developer Egosoft. In practice, this would have meant tying bricks to a bunch of paper airplanes - the exact science of…

Alright, so this is how it's going to be, is it? Craig was Scottish and loved space games. Graham's Scottish so everyone assumes he must love space games too, right? You'd be racist if Scotland was a race. And if I didn't love space games. But I do. X: Rebirth is very exciting, it is being released tomorrow, and now there is a launch trailer…

Space is so big that you could fit everything else inside it and still have room to spare. I know that because a Neil DeGrasse Tycoon image (edit: an upcoming management sim) that I found on an internet forum told me that it was so. Who needs research grants? Look at this, for instance. You wouldn't learn that in a lab. I'm not sure if…

Just the other day I gave you all the gift of a new trailer for X Rebirth, and Egosoft has followed that up with a few new screenshots. I was in two minds about posting them: I am in danger of dragging everyone down into the gravitational pull of my personal excitement, and should probably stop making words about it, but then I clicked on…

It's definitely the prettiest trading I've ever seen. EGOSOFT's X Rebirth is expanding the options for space shopping, as they explain in a new video, that also covers how the game handles mining duties. Now split into two parts, basic inventory trading will be handled by speaking to actual (NPC) people and selling what's in your ship's pockets. Meanwhile, large-scale trading involves more familiar menus,…

Given that we have no "next-gen" on the PC, we miss out on the huge leaps forward that consoles get to have. Admittedly, we trade that excitement in for all manner of upsides, but I do miss feeling overwhelmed by a game. The last time it happened was in Planetside 2, when I was hovering over a tank column that was moving along a road.…

You might recollect that X Rebirth was originally targeted for release a couple of years ago, but it's only now entering those final stages. Word (via Blue) is that it will appear at E3 under the banner of new publisher Tri Synergy. The announcement of this appearance is accompanied by a hand-wavey explanation of delay from the dev's bossman Bernd Lehahn, who says “It’s beautiful,…

Hands up who likes complex space sims? Okay. Now hands up who likes complex German space sims? I thought that would thin you out a bit. The complexiest and Germaniest space sim of them all is the X series. It is a series that's evolved over time into something that actually feels like a place of work, but in an admirable way. Every game I've…